


Five Times Sam Wilson Muttered 'This Is *Not* What I Had In Mind When I Signed Up For This'

by likethenight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Returns, Gen, Long-Suffering Sam, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson Friendship, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Up all night to get Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 09:44:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4474622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poor old Sam. It's one thing to say you'll help Captain America search for his long-lost, brain-washed childhood best friend, but it's quite another to actually do it...(includes mentions of the entirely legitimate PTSD that Steve and Bucky must both be suffering from)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Sam Wilson Muttered 'This Is *Not* What I Had In Mind When I Signed Up For This'

**Author's Note:**

  * For [palavapeite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/palavapeite/gifts).



> This was originally written over a year ago on Tumblr in response to a prompt by palavapeite - the prompt's in the title! Poor old Sam. He definitely didn't sign up for this! (unbetaed and un-US-picked, although I suspect it needs it - I've done my best but I'm sure I've missed a few. I am open to US-picking on this one!)

**1.**  
They haven’t even left the US the first time Sam realizes that whatever he’d imagined about this not-a-road-trip, it isn’t going to be like that at all. As in, he’d imagined that Steve would have it all planned right out and he’d just have to follow orders. Steve is the strategist, after all, and it’s _his_ buddy they’re going after. So when Steve drops the file on the Winter Soldier onto Sam’s dining table, stuffed full of the original Russian papers and the translations Natasha organised for them, and asks Sam to look through it and see what he thinks, Sam just blinks at him for a moment, utterly taken aback. It isn’t until later, when Sam is only halfway through the file and already feeling queasy, that he realizes that he might possibly be in a little way over his head. 

**2.**  
It turns out that Steve-the-experienced-strategist is the sort of Captain who definitely listens to what his men have to say. Sam has the distinct impression that Steve doesn’t quite trust himself on this one and genuinely needs to hear Sam’s ideas and opinions. So Sam tries his best to suppress the excited twelve-year-old inside him, who’s basically freaking out at getting to advise Captain America, and the realistic twenty-something-year-old who knows damn well he’s in over his head, and tries to think as clearly as he can. He’s the one without any emotional involvement in this, after all. Well, apart from the fact that they’re searching for the guy who lassoed him out of the sky, tore off one of his wings and threw him into the ether. Not that sort of emotional involvement. 

He isn’t jealous that he doesn’t get to find his own buddy and bring him back. He knows that’s not going to happen. He saw Riley fall, and unlike Steve, watching Bucky disappear into the ravine, Sam saw Riley hit. He knows he’s not coming back. And he tries not to think about it. 

He’ll think about advising Captain America instead. Which is not at all what he’d expected he’d end up doing.

 **3.**  
They start in Berlin, the old frontline of the Cold War, working off a few leads in the file. A lot’s changed in the twenty-five years since the Wall came down, but there are a good few things left over, a good few shady characters on the Eastern side of the city who may have been points of contact for the Winter Soldier, if he’s trying to retrace his steps, rediscover himself, which is what Sam and Steve have figured he’ll do. Russian connections and HYDRA ones, shifting beneath the surface of Germany’s capital. Not much time for sightseeing, although Steve never actually got to see it during the war, having ditched his plane in the Arctic by the time the city fell, and Sam has never been to Europe. Asia, yes, but never Europe. Wasn’t much time for sightseeing then either.

They’re not there long. Once it’s become apparent that none of the leads has any idea that the Winter Soldier is even alive, let alone roaming around on the loose, and that no amount of threatening from Steve is going to change that, it’s time to move on. Having to hold back Captain America - or trying to, at least - from punching a guy through a wall because he can’t tell them anything is definitely not something Sam had expected to have to do. (Steve apologizes afterwards, once the red mist has dissipated, and looks a little frightened by himself, as well he might.)

 **4.**  
They’re in Helsinki, another old Cold War front line, but this time they can’t find the lead they’re looking for. The language is incomprehensible, the address is gone, and Sam supposes he shouldn’t be surprised because it was a hotbed of spies, apparently, so presumably they were all pretty good at not being found. 

Sam and Steve are standing on a street corner looking at a map and trying very hard to look like dumb American tourists rather than a pair of soldiers on an espionage mission that they are, Sam is increasingly coming to realize, desperately ill-suited for, when a very familiar person steps around the corner and makes them both jump right out of their skins.

“Hey, fellas,” says Natasha Romanoff, as if she’d only left them for five minutes while she went to confirm some intel. “He’s not here, I already checked.”

A brief and necessarily subdued - though heated - conversation ensues between Steve and Natasha about whether or not it would have been good form for her to let him know that she was also looking for the Winter Soldier. Five minutes of talking at cross-purposes later, it transpires that she actually isn’t looking for him, she’s looking for herself, but that their paths run close enough together that she’s ending up in a lot of the same places their file is telling them they should be checking. 

Sam is increasingly certain that he’s _way_ out of his depth here.

 **5.**  
They wind up not finding the Winter Soldier in Europe at all. All the trails have gone cold, the Soviet ones and the HYDRA ones, the contacts either long gone or mysteriously recently vanished; they haven’t exactly been looking for HYDRA bases, but Nick Fury leaves a certain style of destruction behind him and they’ve seen a good few of his signatures across the continent already. Natasha’s gone deep into Russia, or that’s where she said she was heading when she left them in Helsinki, and they haven’t heard from her since. And nobody has had word of the Winter Soldier. Not for years, if the people they _have_ managed to track down are to be believed, and Sam thinks they probably are, because whether or not they realize who Steve is, he’s pretty intimidating even before he gets angry and emotional. He’s getting better at that bit, getting better at hanging onto himself, but Sam’s had to hold him back a couple more times, and that’s still freaking him out a bit. They’ve had a good few long conversations about PTSD and recovery and where-do-you-go-when-your-old-life-has-gone, spending the traveling and stakeout hours talking in low voices, stop-start sentences, and Sam’s come to realize that SHIELD might have sent Steve to psychiatrists, but they either weren’t very good at their job or he wasn’t very good at sharing, because man is he still fucked up in the head. Not that Sam can blame him, he’s fairly sure he’d be far worse in Steve’s situation, but still. So anything he can do to help, he figures he’ll do.

But eventually they have to concede defeat, head home to DC, and Sam comes with Steve to Steve’s old apartment, the one with the shot-up wall and the new neighbor, intending to help him pack up his things; he’s going back to New York for a while, he says, taking Tony Stark up on his offer to go live in that big ugly tower for a while. The apartment feels as it should do when they walk through the door, as though it’s been empty for a long time, which is why neither of them notice for a good five minutes that there’s someone sitting motionless and silent in the corner by the record player. They’ve dusted off a couple mugs and Steve’s made coffee and so they’re both in exactly the right position to make a hell of a mess on the floor when they move into the living area and realize that the man they’ve been hunting all this time is sitting right there. Which is what happens, both of them dropping the mugs and Sam going for his gun, Steve reaching instinctively behind his back for the shield he propped in the hallway when they came in the door. Careless.

The Winter Soldier - Barnes - doesn’t speak, he just looks at Steve, and Steve looks back at him, and once Sam has established that they’re not going to kill each other - or at least, that Barnes isn’t going to have another go at killing Steve - he retreats to the kitchen area to make another coffee, and maybe look for a broom and some cloths, before all that coffee ruins the floor. 

“Man,” he mutters to himself under his breath, although he’s pretty sure Steve won’t hear him, super-soldier hearing or not, because his attention is very definitely elsewhere at the moment. “I did _not_ sign up for any of this. What the hell was I thinking?”

And if, when Sam goes back out to clear up the shattered china and spilled coffee, Steve is on his knees in the middle of the room, facing Barnes in the chair but a safe distance from him still, not speaking but still staring at him, eyes saying more than words ever could, Sam does not look at them. He’ll give them their privacy for this, even if he does have to clean up. It’s the least he can do. He’ll worry about the repercussions later, especially the absolutely _spectacular_ pair of cases of PTSD he’s probably going to have to deal with. Because this time round he knows pretty much exactly what he’s signing up for, and he knows this time to leave room in his expectations for the utterly unexpected.


End file.
